One of the questions from this weeks Guiding Questions that resonated most with me was: “What are ways we can incorporate team building, life skills & leadership games into our PE classroom?” I believe to do this, a teacher needs to build relationships with her students and make an effort to get to know them. This will enable her to see which students can work well together and which ones she can aid in improving their cooperation skills. Creating an environment where students feel safe and included is important. If students feel safe, they are more likely to take risks and want to do better in PE which is an overall great life skill to have. To ensure that all students voices are heard and their needs are met, teachers can encourage students to have weekly reflections (similar to this blog) to express their experiences in PE. Having open communication is important to gauge how students are doing, whether it be one-on-one verbal acknowledgement, breaking off into groups and discussing the day, or through a blog.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
WEEK 4 GROUP B Post
Last Tuesday’s Group Teach team introduced striking and batting games to the class. It was awesome to see how everyone’s energy spiked with the conga line and the warm up activity. Although I was a little wary due to my limited dance abilities, I could see how positive this could be for an elementary class where kids could dance around and be silly and goofy without being judged. I also appreciated how we were able to practice the basic movements of batting and pitching before moving on to the main activity.
I like what Steve says about how we are all on our own physical literacy journey. We learn at our own pace and we improve at our own pace, and that is what we have to keep in mind for our students as well. This is what makes the idea of assessment so tricky. Thinking back to my high school days, I remember assessment only ever being summative and never formative. I was never given feedback to improve my learning or to identify my strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement. I only remember doing beep tests and push up tests at the end of the term to determine my grade, but throughout the term we never had activities directed at working on those movements. Looking back on it now, I can understand how both forms of assessment are useful. Students should be able to receive constructive feedback on their performance so they can improve upon it before being subjected to a summative assessment.
Week 5 Movement Journal by Emily
I thought Vivian, Zoe and Jenny did a fantastic job with Invasion Games last week! I particularly enjoyed getting to see Vivian’s talents when she was teaching us the dance routine and stretching exercises during the beginning and end of the presentation. I also enjoyed our reading discussions and thought the different models were explained to us very clearly and the discussion questions that were given to us were quite thoughtful. During my elementary and high school experience, I felt like the Sports Education model was the most common. There didn’t seem to be any emphasis on social and personal responsibility or physical fitness outside of school.
However, while I appreciate the groups effort to create a sense of bonding and teamwork during their games, I do have a small concern with the last invasion game that was played. I didn’t really like the idea that if one child was tagged or dropped the ball, the entire team was out and had to start all over again. I think this could potentially be a bit shaming for children who are not very athletic. I also think there might be a slight struggle for very athletic children as well. Even if a child is quite socially intelligent, it may be difficult to be so close to gaining points and having that be prevented by only one or two children. A possible solution may be to have the team go back to the halfway point of the gym instead of the very beginning or having the team do some sort of additional task before being allowed to cross the final line. Overall though, I thought the presentation was quite fun and interesting and I feel like the games shown gave us some great ideas for the future.
Maria’s Movement Journal # 3: October 7th
In the reading summary and discussion this week, we reviewed the different pedagogies for teaching physical education. The pedagogy I found to be most effective and the one in which I hope to implement when teaching my Physical Education class was the TGfU or in other words, Teaching Games for Understanding. This pedagogy focuses on learning and performing sports skills in a variety of settings. The end result is athletes who acquire a strong knowledge and recognition of the game and their own abilities. I found the six-step process that TGfU activities follow to be most helpful in understanding this pedagogy in greater detail. Step 1, the game, was the step I found to be most interesting and unfamiliar to me. Step 1 involves having the teacher introduce a modified version of the game that has clear objectives and follows the basic rules and concepts of the formal game. I was unfamiliar with this step because in my previous experiences in physical education, my teachers would often have us students jump straight into the game without learning the fundamental movements and rules. My teachers assumed that we would learn these basic rules, movements and tactics through continuous playing and practice. However, this in turn caused me to lack the game appreciation and tactical awareness (steps 2 & 3), I needed to gain, in order to apply in playing the game. I will continue to review and familiarize myself with this six-step process and apply it when teaching physical education.
On another note, I wish to highlight an experience I witnessed during my first day of practicum in my Grade 1 and Grade 2 classroom. The teacher of this class starts every morning with a thirty-minute walk in the forest next to the school. I think this is a great way to start the day as it keeps the students active and is a great source of energy for the day ahead. Moreover, I noticed that the students were able to focus better and were more energetic once they returned from the walk. The teacher tries her best to implement physical education throughout the day such as taking breaks from sitting and listening in order to stretch and move around. I look forward to learning more about her physical education techniques and to see if she is incorporating the strategies and knowledge we have learned in class thus far. I now know that I must always have my running shoes nearby, ready to be slipped on as required!
Picture: Natural artefacts Grade 1 and Grade 2 students collected from their nature walk
Week 4- GROUP B Reflection
This week we learned about Striking and Batting games through Jennie, Carrie and Travis’ group teach. I am completely blown away by their lesson, it really set the bar for the upcoming groups. From start to finish they kept the group engaged with alternative ways of getting through the lesson. The conga line method of getting the groups to quickly line up and exit will definitely be a tactic that I am going to use with future physical education classes. The warm up activity of stop and go dancing, transformed my morning grogginess into a more positive energy. The instructions, demonstrations and extension options were clear and easy to understand. As someone who never truly enjoyed physical education class, this lesson got me very engaged and the hour actually flew by!
When thinking about the different assessment strategies that can be used to effectively gather student information, I felt that a mixture of formative and summative would be the best way to accumulate thorough evaluation records. Formative assessment will help build each students’ physical literacy as they use that constructive criticism as a tool to improve their skillset in the current activity. Afterwards, a summative evaluation report will be a great way for students to reflect on how well they improved after using the information from their formative assessment. Since I lack a strong physical education background, I always felt that solely using summative assessment unfair in the sense that it does not give students the opportunity to work on their problem areas before a final summative assessment. I appreciated that Travis came around to my group and pointed out areas to improve that I was unaware of. Instead of becoming discouraged with my performance and the activity itself, I was able to enjoy it a lot more with the formative observations along the way.
Week 5 – Movement Journal
It has been said once, but it deserves to be said again: this week the group did a great job at showing us how to teach invasion games. TGfU was a great edition to this class as well, because it will help us in the future with breaking down lessons in a way that helps our students understand the ultimate goal.
We also gained a lot of great knowledge when discussing curriculum and different theories we can apply to our teaching styles. I believe that is necessary to combine different curricular approaches that will assist teachers is modelling a healthy and active lifestyle for our students. Students need the encouragement to find what works best for them in regards to fitness. As I said in our group discussion this week, I don’t particularly like volleyball, but the fact that I was able to get a chance to try running, basketball, badminton, as well as a variety of other games and sports in elementary and high school encouraged me to pursue the fitness lifestyle that works best for me in adulthood.
As well, I cannot emphasize enough how important I believe it is that we encourage our students to eat healthy when in school. From someone who came from a home where eating healthy was not even a consideration, I think it is essential that children are given opportunities to see what a healthy diet looks like and how they can achieve a moderately healthy lifestyle at home or at school. At the very least this given students more opportunities and ideas about how they might eat healthy in their adult lives.
PE teaching reflections
Teaching PE was quite fun. It made me a lot less nervous about teaching PE to real elementary students. Teaching PE made me take note of a few of my bad habits that I will work on before teaching. I realized that I have a tendency to hurry as I worry too much about time limits. I now see that clarity (ex. boundaries) is just as important as time to play the game. I also realized how often I use non-gender neutral terms, specifically “you guys.” I am glad that I have time to shift my word use to more inclusive terms. Preparing for the PE lesson was a great learning experience. It was wonderful seeing all the resources and pre-made games that are easily available. As someone that is more drawn to bottom-up teaching for games, I was happy to see there were plenty of resources.
We were fortunate to have such a wonderful group of “students.” I am looking forward to seeing what teaching PE to real elementary students will be like.
CITE Movement Journal 5 -Lexi Picken
The focus this week was on invasion games. Vivian, Zoe and Jenny all did a wonderful job of making the activities fun, and exciting. I also enjoyed the surprisingly intense workout I received from participating. What made the activities so appealing was that there was continuous active participation. Everyone was constantly moving, and no student was left out or excluded. The group provided quick, easy instructions, and left little down time. Sitting for long periods of time isn’t always ideal for elementary aged students, so I appreciate the group for keeping that in mind.
This weeks team-teach was also able to factor in some concepts of physical literacy. For many physical forms of activities, one needs to master the basic skills before he or she can move on. For example, in volleyball, we need to understand the basic skills of bumping, serving, setting and spiking before we can actually participate in a game. With that being said, I enjoyed that there were various levels of improvement provided on Friday. We started of with basic skills, and gradually improved them as the game intensified. In return, this created an environment where students needed to strategize, as well as work together.
Reflecting back on my personal elementary experience with invasion games, I noticed that they were very independently focused. When playing games like Capture the Flag, students usually just ran and grabbed the flag. Teamwork wasn’t always a factor when playing. In regards to the team-teach, students were forced into working together. Every student needed to cross the end line in order to receive a point. In terms of keeping active participation amongst all students, this style game is the way to go!
GROUP B/ WEEK 4- REFLECTION
This week we read the chapter on assessments and the movement domains. After the reading the two chapters, I have had more understanding how the variety of assessment strategies be used in the P.E. class, such as learning logs and performance task rather than simply-based testing. For example, using the rubric for assessment does help me to self-assess. It does help me to know how I can improve and what I should do differently the next time.
On last Tuesday, the Group Teach did their teaching on striking and batting games. The group started with their instant activity (strike a pose) for five minutes. I found that warm-up activity was good! We can dance or move whatever we like in that area. Even though, I’m not good at dancing. I still have fun in that activity. The group used a rubric for assessment for their activity. I always found it is hard to do self-assess. I don’t know if I should assess myself in a good or outstanding. I always think if you are giving a good or outstanding assessment, then you need to be very good at P.E. or be more physically literate than others. But actually I was wrong! My friend told me that it is not necessary that everyone needs to be fully physically literate. All you have to do is meet all the criteria or standard of the activity then it is all good. I have to say that I really enjoyed the activities on last Tuesday. It was FUN! 😀
Sienna’s PE movement journal (Oct 7th)
This week, from practicum, I had a chance to observe how TGFU concept is implemented in a PE class. In grade 2 PE class, students were divided into four groups, and the teacher gave each corner of the gym as “home station” to each group. The game itself was very simple, but it was fun and a very good example of TGFU. There were 30 balls in the middle of the gym, and students had to bounce the ball to their home station. When there were no balls left in the middle of the gym, students were allowed to take balls from other groups’ home stations. The group who has the biggest number of balls win the game. In my opinion, this game was the perfect example of TGFU to introduce basic skills of basketball. All students actively participated in the game. By the time when the game was finished, most students were able to bounce the ball pretty well. I wish I had an opportunity to play the game like this in PE class before practicing basketball. In Korea, most PE classes were always about playing sports. We play basketball for a while then move on to badminton, and then soccer. Like this, we always learned sports in PE class, so I never knew TGFU. I think TGFU is a very effective method to introduce fundamental movement skills of sports such as basketball or soccer.
Even though I did not experience TGFU in my PE classes in Korea, I realized that I have learned about “PE for life” concept. There is something called “National Health Gymnastics (NHG)” in Korea, and every student has to learn this in a PE class. If I remember correctly, students practice “National Health Gymnastics” at least once a week at school. I heard that a lot of companies try to practice NHG before they start working. Some people practice NHG every morning as their morning exercise. I think this is one of the examples of “PE for life” so wanted to share. Please enjoy the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP5rGmrTyjg